Gerontologic nursing

• Caregivers' distress relative to their persons' delusions decreased significantly. • Caregivers' distress relative to their persons' anxiety decreased significantly. • Severity of persons' living with dementia delusions decreased significantly. • Severity of persons' living with dementia depression decreased significantly. • Total symptom severity for persons living with dementia decreased significantly.

Mary Ann Kelly was prompted to use family trees to help people with dementia after reading a continuing professional development article. Nursing Standard. 15, 17,47-53

Since the publication of 'The pressures felt by informal carers of people with dementia' (Art&Science January 10), have received many calls asking [Illegible Word] more details about the Admiral Nurse Service (ANS).

Aim: To elicit the strategies used by Japanese family caregivers in the community to encourage older relatives with dementia to use adult daycare and respite stays.

Background: Older adults with dementia often require adult daycare and respite stays for their family caregivers to gain respite from care-giving. However, persons with dementia often face difficulty in new environments and timely access to sufficient services may be difficult to achieve. Few studies have examined how family caregivers encourage their service use.

Design: A qualitative method.

Aims.  This paper reports a study to investigate the relationships between informal and formal care, changing relationships over time, impact of integrated care, and theoretical and methodological lessons that can be drawn from research on this topic.

Ask the experts is a forum in which consultant nurses working with older people debate an issue in older people's care and offer advice. This month, Soline Jerram, consultant nurse: older people and intermediate care, from Windsor, Ascot and Maidenhead PCT, poses questions brought to her by intermediate care staff and informal carers.